How going nuclear unclogged the Senate

Now the same left-leaning groups pushing the rules change last year have another complaint: Reid didn’t go far enough. They want to require the GOP minority to execute talking filibusters on the Senate floor and do away with the so-called secret hold that slows the floor down. They call this reform “Use it or lose it.”

“If these rules are designed to have debate, then you have debate. If you don’t have anything to debate, it shouldn’t be just delay,” Baker said.

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There’s no indication Democrats have serious plans to change the rules further, though Reid seems to take special pleasure in wielding the threat.

“Maybe we may get into a little more rule changing, don’t ya’ think?” Reid told thousands of Nevada steelworkers in mid-August.

That’s unlikely to happen this year or next given Democrats’ slim prospects for having sufficient support with a narrow majority that would include Joe Manchin of West Virginia and, if he wins reelection, Mark Pryor of Arkansas. They both opposed last year’s change.

Instead, Democrats are eyeing the short time left on the legislative calendar, looking to further run up a confirmation score of just one defeated presidential nominee since the rules change.

“Because of the rules change we’ve made a big difference on issues to working-class families,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who teamed with Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) to advocate rules reform. “I feel good about that. I feel very good about roughly the doubling of pace that we’ve been confirming judges. I’ve felt that the Republican strategy was trying to pack the courts ideologically by trying to prevent President Barack Obama to have votes on judges.”

The Senate has confirmed 13 appellate court judges and 55 district court judges since last November, cutting the number of vacant judicial seats to 58, the lowest number since Obama assumed his presidency. Given Democrats’ nearly single-minded nomination dedication, aides project that number will fall further before 2015.

Confirmation rates are up, most notably for key appellate judges, which are being confirmed at a clip of about 95 percent — the best since the 1980s, said Sarah Binder, a Brookings fellow and George Washington University political science professor who studies judicial nominees. Binder said that appeals courts are approaching partisan parity for the first time since the beginning of George W. Bush’s presidency.

“He has reshifted the partisan balance,” Binder said of Obama. “There’s a legacy to that.”

Not including senior judges, judges appointed by Democratic presidents hold the edge over GOP-nominated judges on nine of the nation’s powerful circuit courts. There are currently only a handful of vacancies and the Senate will vote to fill one the day it reconvenes in September.

The focus on nominations underscores the fears that Republicans will win the Senate and close the confirmation door to Obama.

“I’m sure they will shut it down. That’s why we’re launching everyone through,” said a Democratic leadership aide. “Even if we’re still in the majority, we’ll probably spend a lot of time in the lame duck on the nominees.”

Democrats are anticipating that their legacy may be defined sooner rather than later. Reid has joked about the “simple math” that gives Democrats the edge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, deemed by most legal watchers to be second only to the Supreme Court in legal impact and precedent.

That court was the focal point of Democrats’ decision to lower the voting bar from 60 to a simple majority after the GOP rejected three of Obama’s picks last fall for the then-evenly split court. Now, Democratic appointees are in the majority, which will affect legal challenges to the president on laws like Affordable Care Act.

“It could mean that a working person will be able to get affordable insurance,” said Michelle Schwartz, a former Senate Democratic staffer now at the Alliance for Justice.

Still, there are sure to be casualties of the rules change. There are more than 150 nominees awaiting Senate floor action and there is not enough time to jam them all through. That new ambassador to Lesotho might have to wait until next year — or beyond.

GOP leaders refuse to entertain how they will handle the confirmation process if they control the chamber, but procedural agreements made at the start of 2013 ensure there will be a discussion — and probably a fight — over how the Senate operates, regardless of who’s in the majority.